Billy the Kid

William Henry McCarty, Jr. (23 November 1859-14 July 1881), more popularly known as "Billy the Kid", was a famous outlaw from Manhattan, New York, who fought in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico in the 1870s for the Regulators party. A legend for having killed 21 men in his life, Billy the Kid became a Wild West folk hero. Governor Lew Wallace eventually put a price on his head, and he was killed by a lawman in 1881.

Biography
Billy the Kid was born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan to a woman named Catherine McCarty and an unknown father, and moved to Indiana in 1868, and then to New Mexico in 1873 after many years of moving around the country. When his mother died a year later, he moved in with neighbors and found employment in a hotel, and he was known for not stealing anything there, and was known to do chores in school. At the age of 16, McCarty was sent to jail for the first time because of stealing cheese and firearm smuggling, but escaping jail by climbing out of the chimney, he became a fugitive. A year later he moved to the vicinity of Fort Grant, Arizona, where he worked on ranches and worked at gaming houses. Billy began to work with John R. Mackie, a Scottish pirate who stole weaponry from the US Army. Billy helped him with this work, and he shot and killed Frank P. Cahill, a civilian blacksmith at the fort who bullied him. In 1877 Billy fled to Arizona to avoid Cahill's friends and others who would want him dead, and moved back to New Mexico four years after his departure.

While in New Mexico, Billy the Kid worked at a cheese factory, and worked for Doc Scurlock and worked on the Coe-Saunders Ranch after meeting the cousins Frank and George Coe and their cousin Ab Saunders. They were hired by John Tunstall and Alexander McSween as guards for their cattle, but when the Jesse Evans Gang killed Tunstall, a war in Lincoln County began. Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan's "General Store Monopoly" fought John Tunstall and Alexander McSween's "Regulators" in a bloody conflict during 1878, and many of Billy's friends were killed. He killed the Sherriff in 1878 and fled to Texas, but in March 1879 Governor Lew Wallace offered amnesty to the fighters of the war, and Billy returned to New Mexico. However, James Dolan, the district attorney, diregarded Wallace's deal and Billy was forced to escape on a horse, now wanted.

He survived by rustling and gambling, but in November 1880 Sherriff Pat Garrett hunted Billy down. He nearly killed him at Fort Sumner in an ambush, and at Stinking Springs in Taiban, New Mexico, he was besieged in a stone building. Garrett shot a horse, blocking the doorway, and he invited Billy to breakfast over an open fire with his men outside. Billy invited him to "go to hell", but the starving outlaws eventually surrendered and were allowed to join the meal. On 13 April 1881, he was sentenced to death by hanging on 13 May, but he shot Deputy James Bell and escaped jail. As he fled, he shot Deputy Robert Ollinger with a double-barrel shotgun, and escaped to the vicinity of Fort Sumner.

== Death ==

Garrett refused to let him get away, and tracked him down to the home of Pedro Maxwell. Garrett entered Maxwell's bedroom, and noticing a dark figure in the thereshold, Billy the Kid reached for his revolver. He asked "Quien es? Quien es?", asking who was at the door. Recognizing the Kid's voice, Pat shot him just above the heart with his own revolver. Billy the Kid gasped for breath and died within a minute.